UPDATE: May 18th 2010 – The team at Linkdex have provided an invite code for SEO Chicks readers. Please use the invite code [seochicks] for pre-approval for a free 7 day trial at InfluenceFinder.com

Lead by serial entrepreneur and founder of Netrank Ltd, John Straw founded Linkdex in 2008. After two years in the making Lindex is about to soft-launch their first product at SMX today. InfluenceFinder is that product, and I’ve been having a little look at the beta version, plus a rather interesting case study using Econsultancy as the test subject.

InfluenceFinder is positioned as a tool for search marketers to improve their working efficiency by applying additional scientific methods to an extensive webmap; such methods include complex decision trees designed to add more value to returned data. Rather than returning the most expansive list of targets InfluenceFinder seeks to return more targetted data with additional ‘signals’ for relevance and authority.

I’ll talk you through the Econsultancy case study, as that identifies some such interesting signals…

1. Objective

I met Linkdex V.P of Product – Matt Roberts last week, and Matt explained that in the Econsultancy case-study the InfluenceFinder team wanted to see how the product stacked up against other backlink resources, not just in terms of volume, but also in terms of value.

2. Methodology

Working with Econsultancy, the InfluenceFinder team were given access to Google Webmaster Tools data for the site www.econsultancy.com and could therefore compare this to the open API data from SEOMoz Linkscape and MajesticSEO; against Influence Finder.

They looked first at commonality.

What is interesting to note here is that 58% of the links reported by Google in Webmaster Tools, are not covered by any of the aforementioned backlink tools. In addition, though this is well known, it is clear that Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t present all of the links it knows about.

InfluenceFinder claim to re-index the backlink data so that it is a much fresher sub-set of MajecticSEO, with which it appears to have most commonality.

3. Additional Value Signals

Expanding on the value of the returned data, the InfluenceFinder – Econsultancy case-study then goes on to establish its’ case for adding value, by focusing on two of the relevancy signals presented in the project results. Firstly, the “blog” signal…

InfluenceFinder uses comlex decision trees to identify (and they say within a level of accuracy to 95%) if a potential link target is a blog or not?

I can see why this would be useful, as blogs can often be really efficient link targets. Additionally it is always easiest to start a list for blogger outreach using the blogs that already link to you.

Bringing this back to the Econsultancy data, applying this filter to identify the “Is a Blog?” signal, whittled the target list to 2723 blogs.

Going further, the next signal applied to this data was “heartbeat”, which is how they have described if a site is active, however there is a bit more intelligence applied to the heartbeat algorithm so that e.g. feed pushers are stripped out. Essentially then the “heartbeat” signal is more a measure of natural regular activity, than just activity.

4. Conslusion

In the Econsultancy case-study, the InfluenceFinder product stripped an expansive list of backlink data into an efficient list of blog targets which they state is effective in that the product succeeds in its’ aim to “turn large lists of link prospects in to smaller more accurate and actionable lists. Better lists result in more conversations with the sites that matter.”

So that’s the InfluenceFinder Econsultancy Case-Study. Linkdex readily admit that a case study of one isn’t the largest sample size, so I’m happy to give you my perspective and I’ll share some data too! Later this week I will follow up with my own thoughts on the product in terms of user-interface, speed, performance, ease of use, amount of data, usefulness of data and more.

Your followup? How would you compare raven tool’s link builder tool? Does influence finder allow for syncing outreach efforts, ie. if sending email via outlook… will it enter this into the outreach efforts? Thanks,